


Akogare

by Todesengel



Series: Social Contract [2]
Category: Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman | Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were never friends</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They were never friends.

In point of fact, the first time he saw the kid, Ken had taken an immediate dislike to him. He was scrawny, and he had no eyebrows, and his hair was cut so short that it made him look like he'd been playing in a lint bin; he reminded Ken of the kids training to be monks at the temple he and his mother went to, to ring the bell on New Years. He clung to Nambu's pant leg with the arm not in a sling, and Ken thought he looked like one of those special kids, the ones he wasn't supposed to stare but did anyway, as covertly as he could, trying to figure out what made them 'special'.

Joe didn't speak at all that first time, except to haltingly introduce himself, words sounding sing-song-y and memorized and wrong, and his bow clumsy and awkward. Ken watched Joe sit on the better living room sofa, staring down at his own feet, and felt smug superiority and the tolerance of knowing that he'd never have to see the kid again, which was the only reason he let the kid into his house in the first place and didn't fuss about it. He was even nice about Joe being too dim to know how to hold a teacup properly, even though Ken warned him that picking it up like that was just going to burn his fingers, and when he held Joe's hand under the cold water, he felt positive that this was earning him some pretty powerful karmic points. He'd even felt generous enough to manage a small, friendly smile, when Joe and Nambu rose to leave, which must have been the right thing to do, because Nambu had given him a small, pleased nod that made Ken feel warm.

"Good, good," Nambu murmured, and Ken figured that this kid had to be someone pretty important because Nambu only spoke with that particular inflection when Ken performed in front of the politicians and military brass who came by the compound to observe him and went above and beyond Nambu's expectations, so he continued to smile nicely even though the kid just looked at him with big, empty eyes.

They made Ken feel a little uncomfortable, like the way he felt after watching a scary movie.

"It will be good for you to have a sparring partner your own age," Nambu said, and Ken kept smiling even though all of the distant dislike he'd been feeling for the kid suddenly shifted into instant, active, intense hatred. He nodded, a little, because he knew that was what Nambu expected of him, even if all he wanted to do was scream long and loud and protesting, and do something really violent.

And then his mom had bent down and hugged Joe hard, like she hugged Ken sometimes for no apparent reason, and kissed the top of his fuzzy head, and Ken realized that, no, he'd been wrong. Hatred was too weak for what he felt.

He wanted to kill the kid.

Ken had never wanted to kill anybody in his entire life.

It was an interesting sensation.

He kept smiling though his face was beginning to hurt. Later he crawled into his mother's lap like he wasn't nearly eight and didn't know how to break someone's arm in six places, and tucked his head into the odd dip between her neck and the curve of her shoulder, wrapped his arms around her as tight as he could and thought, with desperate urgency, _mine_.

"I don't like him," he muttered into the soft cotton of her blouse. "He looks funny and he talks weird and why'd Hakase bring him around here anyway?"

"He's a long way from home, Ke-chan," she told him, her voice gentle and thick with an emotion Ken couldn't name.

"Yeah, well, I wish he'd just go back there."

Ken felt his mother's arms encircle him and for a brief moment he thought she was going to pull him back and scold him, but she just hugged him tightly -- hard enough to hurt, but he wasn't going to complain.

"I think he does too," she whispered.

*

It took Joe three months to lose almost every trace of the frightened boy Ken had met and become an arrogant god-child, all golden skin and curly hair and classical features and enough charm to keep people in love with him even when he was breaking every rule he could. But Ken could see that Joe's eyes were still empty and he still sounded funny when he spoke, and kind of stupid, using childish language and messing up his verb tenses and particles, and Ken still hated him -- more than hated him, loathed him with deep malevolence, with a strength that made his back teeth ache.

And no matter what Joe did, Ken was never charmed.

"You'll never be good enough," he told Joe, again and again and again, every day they fought together, every day they studied together, every day they breathed the same air. He swept Joe's legs out from underneath him with a low roundhouse, landed a brutally swift blow on the spot where Joe's arm had been broken, left Joe huffing and glaring and defeated on the mats. "Just go home already."

"Dream on, Washio," Joe snarled, panting, two months later, arm pressed tight up against Ken's windpipe. Ken dug his fingers in deeper into Joe's flesh, angling up underneath the hard curve of Joe's ribs until Joe pulled away with a grunt and a gasp and a fragmented noise of pain, shouting out in that weird language he sometimes spoke, the one that always made Nambu frown and pull Joe off to the side and say low, quiet things that left Joe pale and serious and quiet.

But Joe was standing -- or at least more vertical then Ken -- and Ken wasn't, and when Joe looked at him with those empty eyes, Ken grudgingly looked away, conceded that he was beaten. This time.

They stopped trying to kill each other after that, but they still weren't friends. They weren't friends in the dojo, they weren't friends in the classroom, they weren't friends at Ken's home where Joe came over every afternoon for dinner and homework and they made fun of each other for being terrible with languages, because as it turned out Joe spoke English perfectly and never failed to rub in the fact that he could conjugate 'to have' in future perfect tense.

Ken didn't bother to hide his smirk when Joe confused _matsu_ with _motsu_ and ended up saying, "I wait the latest copy of _Shonen Jump_."

Joe glared at him and Ken glared back, and even if they weren't trying to kill each other they still hadn't gotten past the stage of trying to break each other's bones, and it was only because his mom was there that they didn't end up with more than a bruise a piece and a stern order to sit still and do their homework.

Ken pulled out his math worksheet, almost groaned but didn't when he saw it was word problems in English. Joe's low grunt of despair made him feel smug enough to forget his mother's scolding. "Last person to finish has to clean the classroom for a week. By himself," Ken said, knowing Joe would take the bet.

"Not fair, my worksheet's all kanji word problems," Joe grumbled and Ken shot him a cool, superior stare.

"Mine's English."

Joe looked at him for a long, cool moment, then down at Ken's sheet.

They didn't speak as they exchanged their assignments, and they still weren't friends.

They _definitely_ weren't friends the night after the day his mom made him invite Joe to stay over for a week, giving him some vague explanation about Nambu leaving for a conference and the base being no place for a child all by himself, which Ken really didn't buy because he'd love to stay on base for a week by himself and have unlimited access to the dojo and the armory and the practice range. But he did as she commanded and when Joe started to thrash and make muted, painful noises -- nightmare noises -- in the middle of the night, Ken's first thought was not a particularly compassionate one.

A rough shove shook Joe out of the nightmare and Ken opened his mouth in preparation of a whispered yelling. But the face that looked up at him wasn't that of the arrogant god-child, but of the stunned kid who showed up on his door months ago. And then the tears started, great, big, round, _wet_ tears that fell without a sound.

Ken felt himself sneer, because he'd always known that Joe really wasn't cut out for the program, no matter how much progress he made physically.

Really. Crying over a bad dream.

Joe's face hardened, a little, lost some of that bewildered expression and he opened his mouth, but it wasn't words that came out, not proper words, but that secret language of his, and all tangled up in a sob. Ken listened to the tone of Joe's voice, starting at quavering anger and dropping quite quickly into desperate, lonely pain.

Ken looked away, embarrassed for Joe, and wishing he'd just shut up already.

Then he heard, amid the jumbled sounds, the low desperate pleas for "Mama, Papa" and Ken knew enough English to know what those two words meant, and so he got up and padded down the corridor to his mother's room, and shook her awake even though all he really wanted to do was to punch Joe hard enough that he'd snap out of whatever he was in and start looking normal again.

His mom didn't punch Joe -- not that he'd been expecting her to or anything -- but he reacted like she had when all she did was pull Joe to her and wrap her arms around him, let him bury his face in her shoulder and sob. She rubbed his back slowly, until he stopped crying and started hiccupping and then, finally, sleeping again, and Ken didn't _really_ begrudge Joe that moment because he'd sort of accepted the fact that Joe wasn't going anywhere.

Still, the next morning while Joe drowsed at the table, bags under his red-rimmed eyes, Ken sidled up to his mother and whispered, "If he misses his folks so much, why doesn't he just go back home? It's not like we _need_ him or anything and anyway, nobody likes him." Which was a lie, but not really.

The ferocity of his mother's reaction startled him, and he was yelping, "ow, Mom, let go!" before he realized that Joe could probably hear him.

But his mother just tightened her grip on his arm, digging into the pressure point as his shoulder. "You be nice to him, Ken," she said, steel in her voice. "I don't care if you like him or not, but if I hear that you've been picking on him, we're going to have words."

"Mooom," and it wasn't a whine, not at all.

"Do you hear me Ken Washio?"

"Yes Mom," he muttered, and rubbed his arm until it stopped feeling quite so numb.

And he did obey her, because while Nambu had told him that Joe was going to be his teammate and they should get along, well, he was only Nambu. This was Ken's _mother_ doing the commanding, and Ken couldn't disobey.

There were Consequences for disobeying her.

So he only tried to push Joe into the river twice on their walk to the train station.

*

Ken decided he liked Jun the very first day he saw her, sitting on a bench outside Hakase's office with a couple of security goons, Jinpei burbling happily in a sling on her back, streaks of dirt on her face and tears in her overly large jeans. He'd been headed back from the med lab, a fresh cotton swab in the crook of his arm from the latest round of blood tests, and three new stitches on his forehead from where Joe got in a lucky shot, and since he didn't really want to explain those to his mom, he made a detour, slipping in between the security before they really noticed that he was there.

He liked to think that it was his glare that kept them from dragging him away.

"Hi," he said, casually.

"Hi," she said back. They eyed each other, and then Jun stuck out her hand. "I'm Jun. That's Jinpei."

"Ken." They shook hands, and Ken liked the feel of her hand in his, soft and thin and small, really not like Joe's at all. "Is he your brother?"

"I guess. I found him and I'm keeping him." Jun absently wiped a spit bubble off of her ear. "So I guess that makes him my brother." She smiled, brilliantly, and Ken kind of felt a small lurch in his stomach.

"Just 'cause someone finds you doesn't make them your family," he muttered, thinking about Joe, whom he still hated although he'd mostly gotten over the daydreams about stuffing Joe into a crate and air mailing him to New Jork or something. At least now when he had that daydream there were air holes in the crate. Sometimes he even sent Joe at the express rate, which would cost him a year's allowance but would get Joe there within a week, three tops, if the postal service's website was to be believed. "If it did, everybody would be related."

Jun looked thoughtful at that, then nodded. "Yeah. You've gotta _want_ someone to be your family. And I want Jinpei to be mine, so there." She looked over her shoulder at Jinpei, who giggled and reached for her hair with his chubby little hands. "I like having a family."

Ken smiled at her, slowly. He liked her, for no reason that he could pin down, really, except that she made him feel comfortable, and the words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying. "If you want, I could be your brother too." He blushed a little, and hated himself for it. "Since I found you and Jinpei and all."

She smiled again, and Ken was glad of his offer. "Okay."

Ken sat down beside her, and he was still too short even at age ten. His feet swung idly well above the ground. He nodded surreptitiously at Jinpei. "Will he be all right if you run?"

"Why would I run?"

Ken frowned at her, just a little. "Well it'd be pretty stupid for you to sit here while I'm busy distracting the guards for your escape. It'd kind of defeat the purpose."

"Why would you do that?"

"I'm your _aniki_ now, right? It's my job to look after you, so I'm going to help you escape before Nambu Hakase can yell at you." He leaned in closer to her, lowered his voice. "Trust me. You don't want Hakase mad at you."

"I don't want to escape. I want to fight." Jun pushed back a strand of hair with her hand, and her eyes were hard and bright and cold, burning with something dark and painful. "I want to fight Galactor. I want to make them pay."

*

After Jun joined them, their relationship changed. Ken still didn't think he and Joe were friends, but it was ... easier. Like Jun was a buffer between them, even though she only showed up for morning training and their math class. Joe had taken to her too, and she had this way of scrunching up her face whenever the two of them started going toe-to-toe and seriously endangering their personal safety that made them cool down a bit. Mostly because Jun knew ways of making their lives a living hell that didn't involve physical pain but did involve the ways she could make the base's network sit up and beg and assign them extra homework like writing thousand word essays on the mating habits of the lesser Scranton fruit bat.

Not that she was a slouch in the physical pain department, or anything.

"Jun fights _dirty_ ," Ken muttered to Joe, hunched over a little and still tender from where she kicked him. And it hadn't been like he'd been doing anything particularly bad. True, he'd been about a second away from dislocating Joe's arm, but, well, that was _normal_.

"You got beaten by a _gi_ -irl," Joe taunted, and Ken pushed him and Joe pushed back, and it was a good thing they were in the infirmary because he did manage to dislocate Joe's shoulder this time. Which was actually kind of scary, the noise it made surprisingly loud, and it was the first time he'd ever seriously hurt Joe -- seriously enough to make Joe go quiet and still and pale, mouth pinched with pain and eyes shiny with tears he wouldn't shed -- and Ken found that the reality of making Joe hurt wasn't as good as the fantasy he'd imagined.

He sat with Joe while they waited for the x-rays, Joe cradling his arm and looking a little green, and Ken told himself that it wasn't because he was worried, or because of the slightly panicky look Joe got in his eyes when Ken started to leave.

It definitely wasn't because they were friends.

But whatever the reason, he stayed with Joe until the painkillers put him under, and that was why the ambulance had already come and gone and taken his mother with it by the time he arrived back at his house. Nishihara-san from next door was waiting for him, and Ken didn't say anything on the drive to the hospital, or when he saw his mother lying there, pale and hooked up to all kinds of tubes and machines. He wanted to run to her, but he walked instead, and hugged her carefully, mindful of the beeping machines and the way she suddenly looked so frail and thin.

"Mom?" His voice broke a little, and he cleared his throat. "What happened?"

"It's all right Ke-chan," she told him, stroking his hair like she always did. The I.V. tube was cold and heavy when it touched his skin. "I just felt a little faint. I'm fine."

Ken nodded, not trusting his voice, and held her hand and thought _She lied to me_ , and felt awed and confused and frightened. He wasn't sure if he was more shocked at the mere fact that she had lied to him or that she'd done it so badly.

She didn't get better, and at the funeral, as he went through the proscribed rituals, Ken found himself growing slowly numb, until he couldn't feel anything. It was as if the days and weeks and months of watching his mother slowly succumb to this strange, wasting illness had wrapped him in muffling cloth, layer after layer that kept the world away from him. Like he was stuck in a dream, and after a while he'd wake up and it would all be all right.

He managed to stay numb for three days after the forty-ninth day when they deposited her ashes into the family gravestone, which made it fifty-six days after his eleventh birthday, and four months after his mother first collapsed. It helped that everybody left him alone, if they even noticed that he had changed -- Uehara-sensei had even praised him for his increased focus and concentration.

Ken stared at the Zen garden that had been installed in the 'inner' courtyard that the dojo opened up on, although, really, it was all more or less arbitrary here, all concrete and industrial lighting. It wasn't a bad garden, Ken supposed -- all rocks and sand and apparently very philosophical and meaning-of-life-ish.

He counted off the seconds as they slowly passed and wondered if this qualified as meditation.

And then Joe sat down beside him with a soft _umph_ and the clink of ceramic on glass.

Ken turned his head slowly, watched Joe with a detached curiosity as he undid the seal on the bottle of sake, put the two cups between them, poured out the first round with ritual care. Ken knew he should ask Joe where he got the alcohol from, perhaps even kick Joe's ass for stealing the booze, but he couldn't make himself care enough to do that. He couldn't even manage more than distant annoyance when Joe grabbed his chin and pulled his face around until all he could see was Joe and a bit of false sky.

"This is not a dream," Joe said slowly, awkwardly, with great deliberation, as if the words had been carefully rehearsed. "It's not a nightmare. It's not a lie. You will not wake up from this, because you're not asleep. Everything will not be all right. She is really dead. She is really gone. And it really does hurt, and it will never stop hurting, although it does hurt a little less after a while, I can promise you that." Joe paused, licked his lips. He drank the small cup of sake like a pro, his other hand still firmly holding Ken's chin, and Ken found himself wondering idly about that and about Joe, and about the way the words seemed to bounce off of him.

Joe took a deep breath before he continued. They were close enough that Ken could smell the sake on Joe's breath. "And you're going to forget things. Like the sound of her voice. Like the perfume she used. Like the way she looked when she laughed. And, yeah, it sucks, a lot. And there's nothing you can do about it. But see, the thing is, you really don't have the luxury of spacing out right now because we've got this war coming and, much as I hate it, we kind of need you." Joe tightened his grip, fingers digging into the joint of Ken's jaw just a little, just enough to really hurt, shook him a little until Ken felt kind of queasy. "You're dreaming, Washio, only this ain't no dream and it's time to wake up."

Ken batted lazily at Joe's hand, the pain in his jaw just sharp enough to make him move. Joe dodged the move easily and pushed Ken, hard, slamming his head against the old wood floor of the dojo with enough force to make Ken's teeth come together with a hard click.

He bit his tongue, deep enough to bleed, and perhaps it was the combination of pain and blood that managed to jar him free from the muffling space he'd wrapped himself in.

"Ow! Damn it. That hurt Asakura." Ken glared at Joe, who glared right back, and he was breathing kind of hard, which Ken thought was weird. It was easier to push Joe's hand away this time, and he sat up slowly, rubbing the spot on the back of his head and thinking about how Joe was really lucky he'd told his mom he'd stop picking on him or else he wouldn't be the only one with lump -- and that thought drew him up short, because his mom wasn't around any more, which meant he didn't have to keep his promise and he could kill Joe now like he should have all those years ago, only it was actually better that he do it now because now he knew all about how to dispose of a body, and so he launched himself at Joe only things didn't turn out quite like he planned, because instead of slamming into Joe as a prelude to some serious brawling, he ended up slamming into Joe and breaking down completely, sobbing like a baby and trying so very, very hard not to, holding back the tears until it hurt more to not cry at all.

"She's gone," he gasped out, heels of his hands pressed into his eyes so hard he saw sparks and lightening flashes. "She's really gone."

Joe didn't say anything, or try to hug him, or something stupid like that and Ken could feel the awkwardness of this whole situation, because they weren't friends. Ken didn't expect Joe to wrap him up in a big bear hug like his mom would have done, and rub soothing circles on his back and whisper all the right words -- it would have been really strange if Joe had done that, beyond strange. And somehow, despite the fact that they were only eleven, it felt _right_ for Joe to be pushing the cup of sake into his hands.

This was Joe's brand of comfort, and Ken drank the first cup in a rush, struggling to keep his face straight even though the burn of the alcohol on his tongue really hurt and the taste of the sake kind of made him feel a little ill. He held his empty cup out to Joe, and after a while he stopped minding the taste.

"Your mom was cool," Joe said, quietly, after about their fourth cup, when he was starting to spill the sake a bit as he poured. He knocked back his drink and grimaced. "Don't know how she ended up with a brat like you."

"Screw you," Ken said, just as quietly, and with no real heat. The tips of his fingers were starting to feel numb and he wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not.

When he was halfway drunk and the world was reeling a little, he said to Joe, "People keep telling me 'at least it was quick', like that's a good thing. Like it's better that she died fast, like it's good that every single day she was sicker and sicker and hurting so bad --"

"People are idiots," Joe grunted, harshly, and when he spoke his eyes focused on a spot somewhere to Ken's left, because even now everything they did was a competition, although Ken wasn't sure if they were competing to see who could drink more or who could go the longest without puking.

When they were completely drunk, Joe got to his feet and punched him, wobbling a bit and falling down from his own momentum until he ended up sprawled beside Ken. Even blind drunk he had good aim, and through the numbing haze of the alcohol, Ken knew he was going to have a black eye tomorrow.

"I really hate you, Washio," Joe muttered, and his voice cracked a little. "You got to say good-bye, you bastard. You got to--" and he cut himself off with a hitching breath that Ken could tell was a sob being kept inside.

"I really, really hate you," he said at last.

Ken didn't really know how he ended up lying next to Joe, so close that he could feel the dampness on Joe's cheeks, see the tears that leaked slowly out of the corners of Joe's eyes.

"Yeah," he said, slowly, closing his own eyes. "I hate you too."

*

They were never friends, at least not in any sort of publicly acknowledged sort of way. By the time they were both willing to admit that they no longer even pretended that they hated each other, friendship was too weak a word for what they had. And so they didn't call it anything at all, or even admit that there was something between them that existed outside or beneath or beyond the bond that glued the rest of the team together. It was just there, and as far as Ken was concerned, he was quite happy to not talk about it and carry on like he always did and ignore the fact that, on certain occasions, the sight of Joe made his palms sweat and caused a not entirely unpleasant tingling sensation. A tacit understanding that they'd buried the hatchet so long ago that they couldn't even remember where they'd put the damn thing made life easier, and Ken found that there was something oddly comforting about sitting on his couch and watching his TV and ignoring Joe as he rambled on about his latest conquest; found himself strangely warmed by the knowledge that if he looked over, Joe would be there, like he had always been.

Jun and Jinpei and Ryu -- they were his team, as much a part of him as his clothing. Joe, on the other hand, had somehow managed to become inextricably woven into the very essence of his self, a fact that Ken only realized after it was pointed out to him by Jun while he was waiting for Joe to finish his last round with the regen tanks after he stupidly almost got himself killed.

"It really wasn't that bad, Ken," Jun said when she finally got fed up with his pacing.

Ken shifted his glower from the door to the infirmary -- which he'd been glaring at ever since the nurses threw him out for being a nuisance -- to Jun, who ignored him entirely. "Not that bad? He nearly lost an arm."

"Ken, he's gotten worse driving." Jun flipped a page in her magazine. "Seriously, you just overreacted."

"Did not."

"Please, you'd think it'd been you that got shot, the way you carried on."

"Can I help it if I'm concerned for my team?"

Jun snorted and closed her magazine. "Sure, Ken." She watched him pace for a while before standing up herself and stretching. "Well. I'm just glad Joe's a guy, because I really wouldn't like my chances otherwise."

"What?"

"Nothing. Oh look, here's Joe."

Ken looked up and Joe was there, one hand supporting himself on the wall of the corridor while he scraped at his tongue with the other.

"Fucking goo," he growled out after spitting to one side. "Going to be tasting this stuff for weeks."

"Well maybe next time you'll be more careful." Ken draped Joe's arm over his shoulder and helped him walk over to Ken's car, even when Joe tried to shove him away, protesting loudly that he was perfectly capable of walking by himself, thank you very much, which was an absolute lie and Ken knew it, because Joe wobbled and wove like newborn deer, even with Ken's support. And even though he tried not to think about it as he gave Joe his 'you stupid, reckless idiot' speech, he couldn't help dwelling on Jun's words, and he couldn't even lie to himself and pretend that the only reason they were bothering him so much was because he was afraid of showing favoritism to his team; Gatchaman didn't allow favoritism.

And yet, despite that fact, Ken had to admit that Joe was...special. Joe was different from the rest of his team, and Ken suddenly realized that he had absolutely no idea what he and Joe were, other than not friends, and that fact bothered him more than he thought it would, so much so that when Joe burst into his speech with an annoyed, "Fuck, the only reason I got hit was because if _I_ didn't get it, then it would've hit you", Ken nearly killed the both of them by hauling his car across three lanes of traffic and down a one-way street going the wrong way before squealing to a halt in the back alley behind the J.

"Thought I was the racer," Joe said after a couple of seconds.

Ken turned the engine off with a vicious twist of the key, but kept his eyes staring straight ahead. "What did you mean?"

"What?"

"What did you mean by, by, by saying that," Ken said, and he hated how he stammered, but his heart was pounding so hard he could barely breathe. "You let someone shoot you? Fuck, Joe, you're stupider than I thought."

Joe slouched down in the seat and propped a knee up on the dash. "Look, it was either I got a shot in the arm or you lost your fucking head. 'Sides, I got the bastard, didn't I?"

"Well what good is a gunner with only one arm?"

"Fuck, you think _I_ want to be the one who has to tell Nambu that he's got to go find another Eagle? Anyway, I'd die for you, we all would. Besides, it wasn't that bad." Joe rotated his shoulder, twisted his arm around behind his back. "See? Good as new."

"Don't. Don't say shit like that." Ken rubbed his face, and he knew he was overreacting, knew that he was blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but something deep and primal within him was frightened and it had shoved his better sense out of the driver's seat and taken complete control. "I don't want to know that."

"Tough." Joe looked over at the J and then back at Ken. "So. We here for any particular reason?"

"What are we, Joe?" Ken asked, and he was just as shocked by his words as Joe. "I mean, we're not friends, so what are we?"

"Dunno. Brothers, I suppose." Joe shrugged, and then tried to hide the grimace of pain. "Never really thought about it."

"Brothers," Ken said in a rush of breath, and he felt a weight shift in his chest, grow lighter, and if maybe he didn't think that 'brothers' was quite the right term for what he felt, it was close enough that he could ignore the odd bits that stuck out. "I can live with that."

"Well, I'm happy for you. Now," Joe said as he got out of the car. "I think you promised me a beer."

*

In reflection, Ken decided that going back to his place after Jun threw them out and polishing off the nearly full bottle of tequila he had tucked away in a cupboard hadn't been the smartest idea the two of them had ever had, but at the time it had seemed absolutely brilliant. So had climbing up onto the roof of his shack, which had actually been quite difficult, although Ken was never going to tell Joe that fact.

"You don't get to die before me," Ken said instead, and Joe rolled over onto his side and stared at him.

"Why?"

Ken thought about that for a while. "Because," he said at last.

"Nice answer Ken."

"Y'know," Ken said as he reached for the bottle that stood between them. "That's the first time you've ever called me Ken."

"Well today was the first time you've ever called me Joe."

"Really?"

"Yup." Joe took the bottle from him, and for a while the only noise was the distant sound of traffic from the city. "So," Joe said at last. "Why don't I get to die first?"

"Well. It's just. You can't, okay? So don't. 'S an order."

"Don't think that's fair. I don't think you should get to die first, just 'cause you're the leader."

"Tough."

"No, no, hang on. Compromise." Joe sat up and pulled out one of the feather shurikens he always had, then grabbed Ken's hand. The cut he made on Ken's hand wasn't particularly deep, but it bled quite freely and Ken tried, rather half-heartedly, to tug it away.

"Hey."

"No, wait." Joe gave himself a similar cut and grasped Ken's hand. "Now. Swear that we're going to die together."

"What?"

"Come on, it's the only way to make this fair."

Ken eyed their clasped hands in a rather dubious fashion. "Y'know, I can't help but feel that this is really unhygienic." He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. "And like a creepy suicide pact."

"Shut up and swear."

"Fine, fine. I promise that you and I are going to die together." Ken pulled his hand away and stared at the smear of blood, then wiped it off on the front of Joe's shirt. He paused, patted Joe's chest again, then reached in and pulled out a pair of rings woven into a leather cord. "What's this?"

Joe pulled the rings back and tucked them away again. "None of your business."

"No, come on. Tell me." Ken reached over and he must have overbalanced because he ended up sprawled across Joe's lap. Which actually gave him better access to the rings, so perhaps he'd fallen over on purpose. "What're they? The novelty prize in box of Tomoe Ame? Going to give them to some girl? What, d'you wear them so you always have one on hand just in case you meet a girl who'll only put out when she's married?"

"They were my parents'," Joe said, quietly, "and I won't take them off until I've killed ever last fucking Galactor."

"Oh." Ken pushed himself up and away from Joe and coughed a couple of times. "Sorry."

"Whatever." Joe drained the last of the tequila in one long swallow. He coughed and his eyes were watery when he looked over at Ken, and they both tried to pretend that it was only from the alcohol. "Got any more of this?"

"Yeah," Ken said as he fumbled his way over to the edge of the roof. "Sure."

*

They didn't talk about it again, partially because when Ken woke up the next day with a headache that made him feel like the anvil of some sort of sadistic blacksmith and Joe drooling in his ear, he found it decidedly difficult to remember that he had friendly feelings towards Joe, let alone brotherly ones, but mostly because they had never been the kind of guys who talked about their feelings. And so Ken never told Joe that maybe he'd been wrong to call them brothers; that maybe there was some other name for what they felt. He never told Joe that sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding form a forgotten nightmare; or that the reason he told Joe he couldn't die first was because the thought of looking over one day and not seeing Joe frightened him more than anything in the world.

He never breathed a word, and maybe he should have because he couldn't help but think that if Joe had known all that then maybe he wouldn't have rushed off and gotten himself into this mess.

The stupid, stupid bastard.

They had all ended up at the J after the funeral, which wasn't a big surprise because they all ended up at the J no matter what the circumstances. All clumped together like ducklings left out in the wood. But they always stuck together, the five of them against the world, and so Ken tried to pretend that this was just another day. That he was wearing a suit because he'd had to go to an ISO conference. That this was a companionable silence and not the deathly quiet of an all-consuming grief. That any minute now, Joe would walk through the doors, as loud and alive as ever, back from some race or something. Not --

 _lying there, bleeding and Ken hadn't known how Joe could have made it this far, not with those wounds, not with his body broken apart and shown to be the fragile thing it was. He'd left bloody hand prints on the wall, long smears of red, a dark red that turned bright when it soaked into the white of Ken's birdstyle as he fell to his knees beside Jun, and Ken thought Joe was dead, hoped, wished, begged the gods that Joe was dead, believed it until Joe groaned and moved underneath Jun's hands_

\-- gone.

He had to lie, had to pretend, because he couldn't face the truth. Couldn't stand the fact that there was this aching gap in his life, this hollowness in his heart. Every time he tried, he felt like he was teetering on the edge of a vast chasm and if he took one step closer, he'd be sucked in and dragged down into a hell he couldn't even imagine.

So he had to pretend that Joe was just away, that he'd be coming back any second. That this feeling like he was missing something of himself -- something important, something vital -- was the real lie here. Because he didn't think he could go on otherwise.

And apparently he was a better liar than he'd thought, because when the door to the J opened with a jangling of the bells Jun had nailed above the frame, Ken was already turning, already saying Joe's name.

But it wasn't Joe. It was just two girls, who were giggling and loud and Ken turned away and dropped his gaze down to the water-stained wood of the bar.

"Jun, you're back!" Girl A -- Ken remembered her, vaguely, someone Jun had introduced him to a long time ago; her name was Mizuko or Asako or something -- shouted. "Hey, I want you to meet my friend Tomoko. Tomoko, this is Jun. She knows that racer you really like."

"You know Asakura-san?" Girl B's voice was softer, but not by much, and all Ken could think as he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, was that she was exactly the kind of girl Joe went for -- which wasn't saying much, really, because Joe went for anything and everything. "Is he, um. Is he around?"

Ken watched the glass Jun had been wiping dry for the past hour slip from her hands, crash to the floor. She fell down beside it in a crumpled heap, a puppet with its strings cut, and Ken closed his eyes and wished he could block out the noise of Jun's sobs. Wet and harsh and --

 _when Joe spoke, the words came out in halting gasps, forced out of a throat torn raw from screaming, out of a body that ripped itself apart with every breath. "I'm sorry," Joe had said, again and again, although Ken didn't know what he was apologizing for. But Ken hadn't been able to say that, hadn't been able to say anything at all, hadn't been able to do anything except just hold onto Joe and feel cold and numb and empty because he knew this was the end even before Joe had coughed out "Go", the blood in his mouth somehow staining the word until Ken thought he saw it hovering in the air, red and dripping and damning. Ken knew, had known as soon as Jun had found him, that Joe was going to die here, and he was going to die alone and in pain, because they had come here to save the world, not Joe, and the others had known that too, and when he told them to go, they did_

\-- broken, cries of grief torn from her soul.

"What's wrong? What happened?" Girl B's voice was growing shrill in her panic and it grated across Ken's nerves. She grabbed Ken's arm, tugged on the sleeve of his shirt. "I just. I just wanted to meet your friend."

"You can't," Ken growled out and shook her off. "Joe --

 _had waited until the others had gone before he started crying, and he said, "Ken, Ken, help me up, please, don't let me die on my back. I don't want to die lying down", and Ken had propped him up and closed Joe's hand around a birdrang. He didn't have to be asked, though, to take Joe's rings, to shoulder Joe's revenge, and he'd struggled with the knot on Joe's necklace, the leather stiff and swollen with blood, and when he'd tied it around his own neck and tucked the rings beneath his suit, they burned him. "Go," Joe had said again, softer and yet more commanding, and Ken hadn't said any of the things that he wanted to say because he didn't have the words. So he didn't know if Joe knew that he was sorry too, or that he loved Joe, or that he would have let the world die if Joe had asked him to_

\-- is dead."

He stood up and grabbed his jacket, pulled out some cash and threw it down on the counter, pushed past the two stunned girls, past Jun who was still sobbing on the floor, Jinpei crouched beside her and Ryu hovering uselessly nearby. "And we weren't friends."

The bells above the door jangled at him cheerily when he left.

*

He ended up back at the graveyard they'd buried Joe in, the little one behind the only Catholic church in the ward, and he traced the words carved on Joe's headstone. Joji Asakura, and except for that and the dates, this one was exactly like the one in another little graveyard behind another little church. Another empty box, another funeral without a body, another marble slab carved out with the bookends of a life, only this time there was no rebirth, no resurrection.

There would be no miracle here.

Joe was really dead this time.

A strange vertigo struck Ken and he gripped the headstone tightly until the world stopped spinning like a centrifuge. The sharp edges made small cuts in the palms of his hands, and the little droplets of blood he left on the white marble soon turned brown, but Ken didn't notice that. He just turned and shuffled out of the cemetery, wandered aimlessly through the darkening hours until, finally, he found himself in the little field where Joe had parked his trailer.

Everything inside was just as Joe had left it -- bed hastily made, dishes washed and tucked away, fridge empty of everything except beer and frozen meals -- and as Ken walked through the narrow confines of Joe's trailer, he began believe that any second now Joe would be back. Began to believe that Joe had never left, because Joe was so very present here, his existence undeniable.

Ken lay down on Joe's bed, buried his face into Joe's pillow. Closed his eyes. Slept.

*

Ken awoke with the awareness that he wasn't alone, and although he kept his body loose and heavy with feigned sleep, his senses were taut and keen as he tried to figure out where he was and who could be standing over him.

"Ken?" Joe said. "What are you doing in my bed?"

Ken relaxed and rolled over, a grin on his face. "Hey. You're back."

"You're still in my bed."

"Yeah, I was waiting for you. Must've fallen asleep." Ken closed his eyes, and there was something important that he was forgetting. Something extremely important, and Ken furrowed his brow and tried to chase it down in the corridors of his mind, but it kept slipping away like mist being burnt off by the rising sun.

"Well move over." The bed creaked and dipped as Joe sat down, and Ken obligingly shifted his body until Joe could stretch out beside him.

"So," he said. "It's done."

"Yeah." Joe laughed, a little. "Damn. Forced to retire before I'm twenty. 'S got to be some kind of record."

"Yeah." Ken scratched at his nose, idly. "Hey. What're you going to do now?"

Ken felt Joe shrug, felt the slide of Joe's skin against his and he remembered, quite suddenly, that Joe did like sleeping nude. "Dunno," Joe said. "Probably race full time."

"You know the ISO isn't going to let you keep the car."

"Yeah, well. Didn't like her that much anyway. She tended to stick when shifting into second," Joe said after a long pause, and his strained attempt at pretending like it didn't really matter to him made Ken laugh in a way he hadn't been able to for a long time.

"Oh shut up. Let's see how much you like it when they come for your plane," Joe grumbled.

"We're really done," Ken said at last, his tone sober even though he still grinned a little. "I mean. That's it. They don't need us anymore. We're free."

"Yeah, free to stave. You know the bastards at the top are just going to cut us loose and wash their hands of us now. No retirement pension for us, Ken. Fuckers probably thought we'd all be dead."

Joe's words made Ken shiver, and he didn't know why; made him afraid and anxious; made him feel like time was running out, like he had to hurry, but he didn't know why. The war was over. There was nothing that could interrupt this, so he didn't need to rush, and yet he felt like he had to, like he was running a race against some unknown opponent and he had to finish first or else something dreadful would happen, something terrible that he had to prevent at all costs, except he didn't know what he was supposed to say or do to save the day. He felt like he was caught in a vise, and then, suddenly, everything was clear.

"Joe, I've got something to tell you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Ken took a deep breath, rolled onto Joe, and kissed him hard and fast, slid his fingers through Joe's hair. He was hard and wanting by the time the kiss ended, and he could feel the pressure of Joe's erection digging into his thigh. He pressed his face against the crook of Joe's neck, cheeks flaming, and whispered into the roughness of Joe's skin, "I love you. I've loved you for so damn long, and I should've said something, but I was so afraid of losing you. I never want to lose you."

Joe's hands cupped his face, brought it up for another kiss, this one soft and sweet and when it was over and he spoke, his voice was heavy with some ancient sorrow. "Ken. You know this is a dream."

"Yeah." Ken said, and he closed his eyes and shuddered as he held back a sob. "I know. But. Can't I go on dreaming for a little while longer?"

"I'm sorry," Joe said, and when Ken opened his eyes, he was alone.


	2. Excised Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Excised material from Akogare

They'd never been friends.

In point of fact, the first time he saw the kid, Ken had taken an immediate dislike to him. It might have been because he was a surprise, and Ken didn't like surprises. It might have been because this was his house, and the kid was an uninvited stranger (to Ken, anyway, and it didn't matter if his mom had invited the kid or not) and Ken liked people invading what he considered his even less than he liked surprises. It might have just been a matter of the way he looked.

Mostly likely, though, it was because of the way the kid clung possessively to Nambu -- and the way Nambu let him, and _that_ wasn't fair at all, because Ken had known Nambu longer, he was sure of it, and _he_ wasn't allowed to cling, _he_ had to show proper respect and always address him as 'Hakase', always use the honorifics, be polite, don't want people to think you grew up in some back alley, do you?

And so Ken had looked at the kid and disliked him intensely.

He was scrawny, and he had no eyebrows, and his hair was cut so short that it made him look like he'd been playing in a lint bin; he reminded Ken of the kids training to be monks at the temple he and his mother went to, to ring the bell on New Years. He clung to Nambu's pant leg with the arm not in a sling, and Ken thought he looked like one of those special kids, the ones he wasn't supposed to stare but did anyway, as covertly as he could, trying to figure out what made them 'special'.

Ken didn't think there was anything special at all about the kid; definitely nothing that would rate him high enough to be escorted about by Nambu himself. Definitely _definitely_ nothing special enough to allow him into _his_ house, and if Nambu and his mother hadn't been there, Ken would've shut the door in the kid's face.

He slouched down against the couch in sullen resentment, glared at the kid who just looked at him, and his eyes were empty.

It was kind of scary.

"Ken, this is Joe -- Jouji Asakura. He's going to be joining us," Nambu said, and that just made Ken angrier. _He_ was the only one special enough to get to go to Nambu's school. Nambu had told him so and now they were going to let this scrawny little runt in? No way.

Ken set his mouth in a firm line and moved from dislike to active hatred.

"Ken," his mother said, firmly, in the tone that meant obedience or else. "Say hello."

"Hello," he muttered, staring at the floor.

"Joe." Nambu's voice had...softness to it, gentleness he never showed to Ken, and that pushed Ken right over the edge of hatred and into malevolent loathing. "Joe, say hello." He stroked Joe's peach-fuzz head gently, just to get his attention, and said again, a little louder, "Joe. Introductions."

Joe blinked, slowly, and slid off the couch. He stood awkwardly, and bowed unsteadily, and he had a funny accent. " _Hajimemashite,_ " he said, stumbling and stuttering. " _Dozou yoroshiku onegaishimasu._ "

"What a polite young man," his mother murmured, and Ken winced at the reprimand implicit in her tone. "Ken, why don't you take Joe up to your room to play?"

"Mom!" Shocked outrage made him shout, made the end of it sound like a whine, and he barely noticed that Joe twitched away, dismissed the reaction out of hand -- he had more important things to deal with, after all. Like his mother and the fact that she wanted him to ... play ... with this, this, this kid, this brat, this invader. Was she _blind_? Didn't she see that he had a grudge match going on here? That this was his mortal enemy? And she wanted him to _play_?

"Ken." It was steel, steel brooking no argument, no pleading, no attempts at deal making. "Take Joe up to your room."

"Yes mom." Ken slouched off the couch and shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked at the kid and jerked his head. "This way."

Joe stared stupidly at him. Ken looked at his mother, who was firm and unyielding and Ken knew that she and Nambu were going to Talk and there was absolutely no way that he was going to be getting out of this whole 'playing' thing. He huffed, a little, and grabbed Joe by the good hand and yanked him out of the room.

"C'mon," he muttered. Joe's hand was bigger than his, but not by much, and a lot thinner. He stumbled as he walked, and Ken was sure that there must have been some mistake. Maybe Joe was just joining them for the strengthening exercises Nambu had him do every morning -- the son of some politico who was afraid his heir would turn out to be a sissy. No way could this kid be _training_ training, not like Ken was. Not to save the world.

He slid the rice paper door to his room back and grimaced for his mother at the mess. Futon still out, manga scattered about, a paper plane that was supposed to be his math homework (and he wished they'd give him something harder than algebra) marking his place in his biology textbook, a model plane half-done on his desk and two more waiting for the finishing paint touches, and Ken felt his shoulders stiffening in resentment because he'd seen the rooms of other kids his age and his was practically spotless in comparison. Joe looked around with the same blank expression he'd been wearing since he got here, and Ken had to tug on his hand a little to get him to enter the room.

"Sorry 'bout the mess," he muttered, shoving the futon over with his foot and making a half-hearted attempt at neatening things up. "You like manga? I got _Astroboy_ an' _Lone Wolf and Cub_ an' _Akira_ , but don't let my mom know, 'k? She thinks it's too violent."

The kid stared at him, and Ken huffed out an impatient sigh.

"Manga," he said, slowly and distinctly, because he was beginning to suspect that the kid was special like Yuki-down-the-block was special, and his mother always made him help Yuki out, so this whole 'playing with Joe' thing was probably more of the same. Not that that explained why Nambu was involved, but Ken was still rather fond of his 'son of some big muckety-muck' theory. "You know. _Comiku_."

Another blank stare and Ken grabbed a book at random, flipped it open to a random page -- some guy's head was exploding in graphic detail across the two pages, which Ken thought was pretty cool -- and shoved it in front of Joe's face. "Pictures. With words. They tell a story."

Joe paled (which Ken hadn't thought possible, given how colorless Joe was to begin with) and shoved the book away, hard, and Ken shoved it back, mostly out of malicious spite.

"Don't you want to look?"

Joe shook his head, teeth clenched so hard it made the tendons in his neck stand out in sharp relief. He made strange, desperate sounds, and hunched his shoulders once or twice, and Ken quickly put the book away. The last thing in the world he wanted was to clean vomit off of his bedding.

 _Wimp_ , he thought, and he couldn't help the sneer. "It's just a drawing," he muttered. "It's not like it's real or anything."

Still, he didn't try it again with any of the other manga, and when Joe was less white and more pink, Ken gave him one of the _mukashi banashi_ his mom still kept around, even though he'd outgrown those fairy tales long ago.

"Here," he said in a more conciliatory tone. " _Momotaro_. It's good." Joe eyed him warily and Ken flipped the book open, showed Joe the brightly colored pictures. "See? It's for kids. Momotaro doesn't even kill the _oni_."

Joe took the book, flipped through it quickly, distrust so patently obvious that Ken growled out, "I'm not lying to you, it's really just a kid's book."

But Joe had to see for himself, and when he was apparently satisfied that there were no exploding heads hidden among the cheery illustrations of a boy and his band of talking pets, he sat down, put the book in his lap, flipped to the front of the book again, and bent his head over the pictures. Ken watched him for a minute, just to make sure there would be no further danger of vomit on his bedding. But Joe appeared to be engrossed in the simple story, using his finger to trace the outline of the _obaasan_ 's face.

Ken picked up his English textbook, and threw himself into the future tense. How he hated English, with its messed up grammar and, oh, the verbs! The verbs were enough to convince Ken that the Buddha had been absolutely right about the whole "life is suffering" thing.

It was in the middle of translating a particularly tricky sentence ( _and what the hell did "preserveth" mean? Stupid, stupid English with its stupid, stupid books about robots, and how the hell did a robot relate to a city anyway?_ ) when his mind registered movement. He looked up, expecting his mother with a snack, mind lulled by the routine of study into forgetting that this wasn't a normal day, and so he was momentarily surprised by the mere presence of Joe. And then his eyes connected with his brain and Ken was up on his feet and using the one-hand thrust Jisai-sensei had shown him yesterday -- quick sharp movement, and Joe's chest was surprisingly thin under the palm of his hand, all the bumps and ridges of his sternum so easily felt -- and then Joe was falling and Ken grabbed at the picture Joe had been holding, clutched it tight to his own chest. He was breathing hard, and angry, and he didn't care that Joe had landed on his broken arm, didn't care about the pinched, painful expression on his face or the fact that he was biting his lip to keep from crying out. Didn't care that hurting this kid would get him a one-way ticket out of Nambu's program. Didn't care about anything except for the fact that he was angry, and this brat was the cause of that anger.

"Don't touch that," he hissed out. "You don't ever get to touch that."

He was still trembling with rage when he put the picture of his father -- the only one he had, the only evidence that his fractured memories weren't just wishful dreams -- back on his bookcase, back beside the death tablet he'd painstakingly carved. The deep breathing techniques Jisai-sensei had shown him weren't working, and he almost lashed out when he felt Joe come up behind him; would have if Joe hadn't been injured, if attacking him wouldn't have been at all honorable.

Still, if Joe touched the picture again, Ken was pretty sure he would throw honor to the winds.

" _Il vostro papa? Capisco. Il mio papa morto anche_." Joe's voice was surprisingly deep; rough too, like Hinako-obasan's, who always had a cigarette in her mouth. Ken found himself staring at Joe in surprise -- not sure if he was more surprised by the mere fact that Joe had spoken, or by the quiet compassion in his voice, or simply the strange sounds, unintelligible words that flowed out of this quiet, pale boy like a sunlit river, golden and graceful. And then, suddenly, another boy, another person flashed across Joe's face -- a hard, arrogant boy with smug, laughing eyes and a mouth that curled up into a sneer instead of a smile -- and although the words still flowed smoothly like a river, there was an edge to them, to the voice; rocks in the river. " _Ma siete ancora uno allocco_."

Even if Ken couldn't recognize the words, he could understand the inflection, and he was pretty sure he just got called something very rude.

"What'd you say?"

" _Stupido._ " Joe grumbled, with an eye roll and a rather expressive gesture, before speaking slowly and carefully, with a condescending tone. " _Non parlo Giapponese, tu sciocco._ "

It probably would have turned into a fight if Nambu hadn't arrived with a stern, " _Joe_ " that made them both stiffen into expressions of contrite obedience. Instantly Joe shut down, face blank, and the boy he had been just a few seconds ago disappeared, replaced by this ghost of a person. Ken stared at him, hard, rudely, eyes narrowed as he tried to figure this kid out, tried to make the two personalities merge into one.

He still hadn't figured Joe out when the two of them left, details burned out by the setting sun. Ken stood in the doorway and watched until they were out of sight, then turned to his mother.

"I don't like him," he said, with all the finality of youth. "I'm never going to like him."

"Don't say never, Ke-chan. You might change your mind."

Ken nodded, dutifully, but didn't believe her.

 

**********

"I'm sorry," he said, years later, when they were sitting on the wing of Ken's plane, feet dangling in space, and soaking in the golden warmth of the setting sun.

"For what?"

"For that thing with the manga. When we were kids," Ken said, gesturing vaguely. "For being an ass to you. For hating you."

Joe shrugged, looked away. "You didn't know," he said quietly. "Besides, it's the past."

"Still."

Joe nudged him, gently, with his shoulder. "Forget about it."

"I just wanted to say it. In case."

"Yeah. I get it."

Their shadows slid along the ground, long and awkward, and intertwined.

"I don't hate you," Ken said, at last, quietly, staring into the purpling sky.

"Yeah," Joe said, just as quietly. "I know."


End file.
